Before the Rabbit Hole
by Melanippos
Summary: A prequel the return of Alice to Wonderland, inspired by Bri-chan of Deviantart's lovely comic involving the grown up Alice and the Hatter.


**Disclaimer:** Alice in Wonderland is, by now, public domain. This doesn't mean that I can say the characters are my own - but it does mean I can do what I like with them without being sued within an inch of my life. Hoo. Ray. Having said that. This tame little piece was written several years ago in response to Bri-Chan on Deviantart's fabulous hatter character - back before AiW had become popular again. There's nothing much new here but I hope you enjoy these turns of phrase and fond foolishnesses of mine.

_Before the Rabbit Hole._

The old Reverend Dodgeson had visited some few weeks before Alice returned to the field with the rabbit hole...

He had been the catalyst for her even consider the true existance of her Wonderland. Years ago her parents, peers and society had convinced her that those summer adventures had been only been a childish dream. The old man had been barred from their household for so long and Alice had been so busy with learning to be a lady that she had all but forgotten him. Then he arrived to speak with her father on a academic matter and, as her father had been temporarily unavailable, she and her mother had been present to provide hospitality during his wait. He had been, she thought, a little distressed seeing her no longer being a child of eight - but at the same time his attentions made her uncomfortable. She had tried to distract his attention from herself by recalling his memory to the summer days punting in Oxford and, despite the censuring glare of her mother, had managed to steer him onto the subject of his publications and the parts that she remembered that were not in the book.

"...that afternoon you went missing for the better half of a day, your sister was most distraught. I should imagine thats where it all really started." He had edged closer on his seat to her and Alice had had to restrain herself from moving away.

She could see her mothers mouth tightening in a distainful line and had wished that the Reverend wouldn't look at her quite so much.

"I was wondering if you might assist me with a third Alice book given the success of it. Your presence has always inspired my writing." Again that slight movement towards her and she stiffened..

"Imagination and fancies are not suitable in a young lady of any distinction." Her mother interrupted "And Alice will shortly be presented to society. She will not have time for trivialities such as you suggest Reverend." At that moment a maid entered to say that Mr Liddell had returned and would see the Reverend Dodgeson in his library. Alice's mother excused her daughter self and sent Alice off to change for supper, pausing only to tell Alice that she should not speak with the author again and Alice, despite her fond childhood memories of the man, found herself glad to have such contact forbidden.

Given she had a half hour before she was expected anywhere again Alice changed as fast as her fingers could manage the buttons, pulled a book from between her bed slats and, hiding it in her skirts, headed for the old study. Hoping to avoid her both parents and the Reverend so as to have some time for herself - to think and to escape reality, albeit briefly, through fiction.

Alice sat in an old oversized horse-hair stuffed chair and stared at the darker patch of wallpaper where the looking glass had once hung. Her hands were demurely laid in her lap and her ankles neatly crossed, back straight and aprons crisply ironed. Had anyone looked in they would have thought her a statue, perfectly proper young lady.  
The looking glass over the mantle had been sold long ago when the family had had financial difficulties. Since then fortune had once again smiled on the family but it had made Alice's mother intent on making sure no further stain would be attributed to the Liddell name and that her children should be married in the most advantageous manner possible.

Of all the house this room, the old study, had yet to be restored to its former glory and Alice was grateful of that. Her mother didn't allow guests within and was so pained by the shame the room dredged up she herself avoided it.

Alice was sitting still because there had been footsteps in the hall. A moment before she had been reading, the book was now hidden in the folds of her skirts. Arabian Nights was not considered proper reading for a young lady. Between the dance tutors and language lessons, ettiquette and posture, elocution and hostessing, Alice escaped where she could, when she could.

Usually she would have been engrossed in reading once more as soon as the footsteps had passed but the earlier conversation kept playing through her mind - the incongruencies between her memories of that Oxford summer and the written story the Reverend had stated as being very close to as she had originally told it. She knew the old mathmatician had a precise mind and his memory of the story would be accurate. What she had not counted on was how often she had apparently interjected with one fact or another that was incorrect during the original telling of the tale. The Reverend had actually insinuated it was more her telling of the story than his and apart from some grammatical correction and occassional alteration of parts that he considered unsuitable, the majority of the tale telling had been her own- this revelation and his barely veiled desire for her assistance in writing a third book had made her mother stiffen with the improprietry of the thought.

Alice's thoughts were distracted by a movement seen from the corner of her eye, a crimson flicker of movement, much like a cats tail twitching caught, she turned to look - nothing there.. but there had been a sound too. A skrittchy, skittering sort of sound...

Curious... most curious... She shouldn't look - the floor was awfully dusty... It might only be a rat...

But...

The skittering sound was replaced by a scraping, something wooden moving on the floorboards.

Alice was on her knees by the grandfather clock and peering under it before she was aware of moving. Years of repressing her natural curiosity had concentrated it in such a fashion that on occasion she found herself moving without thought, to investigate. It had gotten her into trouble several times in the past but until now Alice had thought she had it under control.

Well since she was down there already...

The gloom and dust beneath the clock obscured her vision but there was something at the back, pushed up against the wall, she reached for it but her arm wasn't long enough...  
A steely glint in her eye and jaw set Alice paused for a moment to listen for possible interruptions from outside then, hearing none, hitched up her skirts and stretched a leg under the time piece, waggling it to and fro to find the item.

Her foot knocked something. Hooking the toe of her shoe around it, heedless of the dust and scuffing to her slippers, she scooped it out from under the book case. It was a tattered old comfit box, the cover waterstained and torn. Written on it in crayon by her own childish hand were the words:

"Alices sekrets. Trespasers will be et by Momraffs!"

A box of childhood treasures. She had forgotten they ever existed and with a hushed, half-held breath - afraid to find the contents gone or, far far worse, to be mudane and meaningless - Alice lifted the lid.

The smell of dried flowers and a lost summer's day drifted out, caught in the cold air of the room and dispersed. Here were the things she had put aside knowing with a child's wisdom that they were precious and could not be understood by adults for their importance.

A dried crown of daisies, their fragile petals whisper thin and stems wistened, encircled a small empty bottle. The hand written lable, tied on with twine, was to faint to read -the ink time-faded. Beneath this and scattered about was her old thimble, a fine sheen of sea salt glistering inside, a strange, short fingered white kid glove that would never fit a human hand and a playing card, the ace of hearts, on the back, in irridescent peacock ink words written in a lavish copperplate "Remember?"

Alice frowned slightly - she couldn't remember the card. She resisted the urge to pick it up - the flower crown rested on it and she feared it disintegrating if she moved it.  
There was something brown spilt on the card...

Cautiously she raised the box to her nose and sniffed... Tea. Probably English Breakfast from the smell. A shiver ran down her spine as she felt she almost heard the clatter of cups on saucers and the shrill whistle of kettles all piping.

Holding the box gingerly she lowered the lid again and sat staring at it without seeing, biting her lower lip. The mirror was long gone but there might still be a way back... But dare she?

~)o.o(~

The first, second and third suitors came in quick succession after the Reverend Dodgeson's visit and Alice began to wonder if her mother was attempting to prevent any chance of the mathmatician's return into their social circle.

So far none of the potential husbands had measured up to the standards that the social-climbing Mrs Liddell had set for her second daughter but it seemed only a matter of time and Alice was beginning to feel claustrophobic. Despite the new wardrobe of splendid gowns for her 'coming out' into polite society Alice would have gladly swapped them all for a simple cotton dress and pinafore if it would have excused her from the formal restraints set on her. The first time she had been laced into her 'adult' corset she had been sick and spent several days dizzy from lack of oxygen. Her mother had, the first few times, commended her on showing a delicacy of nature but then when Alice passed out almost anytime she had to dance she was that 'that was enough' and no one would want an unhealthy wife. And still her education into ettiquette continued with nigh on brutal adherance to the rules, nuances and unspoke regulations of Victorian society.

Each night, once freed of the vice of her corset and left alone, Alice had opened the comfit box and looked on its contents with . The daisy crown had lost several more petals and she still dared not move it for fear of it crumpling all together. Hence everything else had remained untouched. But on the night of her decision Alice had squared her shoulders, pushed her plait back over her shoulder out of the way and as gently as she could she slid the playing card out from under the dried blossoms to looked closer at the word.

_"Remember?"_ It gleamed irridescent.

An static crackle shivered through her fingers and down her spine, the green ink on the card face seemed to glow in the candle light.

"How strange..." Was it ever possible? Could it still be possible? She had grown up... did that make the boxes contents false? The mirror was gone but...

Alice turned the card over to look at the design on the back. It had a stylised tangle of rose adorned bushes that, on a certain angle, seemed to have faces but there were no other marks. "curious... curiouser" Her lips curved in a smile around that old word. She had had it stamped out of her vocabulary long ago but it hadn't been entirely forgotten.

Yes 'curiouser'.

She turned the card over again and drew in a breath - the word had changed - now Written in gold ink were the scrawled words:

_"Will you, wo'n't you, will you, wo'n't you, wo'n't you join the dance?"  
_

A shiver of forboding and a decision that had been hard debated the last few days was finally made.

"Yes. Yes I do believe I shall." Alice murmured to the box, sliding it back into its hiding place. "I'll take my plaice with the seals, turtles and salmon. If I can find my way back." With a sense of porpoise at long last and a curl cornered mouth Alice climbed into her bed and fell asleep.

~)0.0(~

Alice had contemplated running away before but had long ago ruled it out, she had read many books with run aways and their fortune had always struck as a little to neat. Instead she organised to stay with a school friend nearer London for the season, her mother had eagerly agreed, forseeing Alice's chance of attracting highborn or wealthy suitors being greater the nearer London she was situated.

What her parent were not aware of was that Alice had sent another letter three days before she was to leave regretfully announcing to the friend that she could not come due to illness and any letters should be forwarded to Bath.

The night before she was to leave, Alice packing the smallest valise and the only bag she intended to carry with her all the way to her destination. Into it she put the comfit box, padded with tissue and wedged flat to reduce jarring, a clean shirtwaist, skirt, socks, as much money as she had saved and, after careful consideration and a trip to the smoking room, a tightly stoppered bottle of her father's best brandy.

The first train trip had been uneventful - the kindly old conductor had kept an eye on her all the way to Reading and had only left when she had assured him she could see her friend coming. She had had the porter remove her luggage to the waiting room then, when attention was diverted by the next incoming train, removed all the lables and anything that might have identified them as hers and briskly headed for the ticket office to buy a one-way ticket to Oxford.

The second trip had been nerve racking. She kept thinking she saw her fathers work fellows and waited, tense, for one or another to recognise her and question her unchaperoned presence. A couple of the students had been oggling her as well. She fingered her valise and thought about the eight long, sharp hatpins she wore in her coiffure. They gave her comfort and the next student that looked at her, some five years her elder, she glared at with such censure that he blushed and looked away.

It had been many years since Alice had been to Oxford and then she had always had company but she did not slow her pace - it was with a set jaw that she ploughed across the fields, her light shoes not suited to the pace or terrain but she had the bit in her teeth. If she didn't try now she'd never have the courage. She'd end up married to suitor this or suitor that and entirely trapped by society like the rest of her siblings. She remembered the playing card, her dance card as she now thought of it, and stepped up her pace further.

The setting thin autumn sun barely warmed the soil as she came to the bank where her sister had sat all those years ago. The gnarled old tree that had shaded them both was still there, smaller and more bent than she remembered. Alice leant against it briefly to catch her breath, thankful that she had thought to slip into the ladies room and loosten her corsets before she left the train station. Looking around her heart began to skip in panic... Where was the rabbit hole?

It was nigh on ten years since she had last been here and a different season- the field was stubble, the hedge had lost most of its leaves to the early frosts and she had been so intent on the rabbit back then that she wasn't sure she knew which way she had run after it.

Scanning the hedgerow she finally did find a rabbit hole. And thats all it was - a hole in the ground, too small for a child let alone a young woman to crawl down it.  
Her resolve weakened Alice slumped to the ground and sat in the dirt staring at the hole.

Stupid Childish Foolishness.

How had she managed to convince herself that she would escape to some fantasy land? Here she was sitting in the middle of a field in Oxford, miles and miles from home. Tired, hungry and footsore, the last of her travel money far to little to get home. The scandal of it would shame her entire family and she would be paying for it the rest of her life.  
It was time she put these nonsensical childish dreams aside for good and accepted her place in society, as everyone else had.

But...

Her hand felt the edge of the comfit box through her valise and she drew the box from her bag and looked at it with adult eyes. It was a tatty old box. Just a tatty old box filled with make-believe rubbish... Tears leaked from beneath Alice's lashes and she lifted her arm ready to throw the box and all it stood for as far away from herself as she could but didn't. 'Do all grownups have to throw away their dreams? and is it this painful' Alice asked herself - remembering with regret how she had wanted to grow up - to become a queen of consequence so long ago in that checkerboard land.

Anger stirred in Alice. Anger she had never been allowed to show at home. The furnace of fury seethed in her stomach and she leapt up, kicking the rabbit hole with a shout of frustration and pain. The entrance crumbled and Alice kicked again and again, hurting her foot on the packed soil...

But the burrow hadn't collapsed, only the entrance and it looked larger than it had been!

Alice fell to her knees and clawed the soil away - the burrow was far larger some foot or so in beneath the hedge - easily large enough for a child to crawl through, a tight squeeze for herself...

She could see a cobweb and roots growing from the walls, it hadn't been used by anything but a spider in a long long time, A a glint of tarnished gold thread caught the last light of the day, tangled in a root jutting from the burrow wall.

Alice pushed away the sense of claustraphobia that the burrow gave her.

She wasn't going back home. She couldn't go back. Not now.

It was with a sense of desperate intent that Alice opened the box for the final time.

The daisy crown had only a few sad petals left on it, the rest sat rumpled and scattered in the bottom of the box. It looked a sad wisened thing.

She picked up the bottle and glove and put them in her pocket, tucked the playing card into her shirtwaist and carefully, oh so carefully, lifted out the daisy circlet and placed it on her head. She shivered slightly as she set it in place, the sky was darkening and the first few stars had come out, the wind was cool but it was something else that caused her tremor. Neither good nor evil - just Other. She looked at the hole again and gritted her teeth. Taking a deep breath she threw her valise as far ahead of her down the tunnel as she could and crawled after it on hands and knees. She battled the voice in her head that told her that she looked ridiculous, that she was all alone if a field crawling into an animal hole and that she would soon find herself in a muddy dead ended under a hedge. Instead Alice tried to muster up all the curiosity she had so long suppressed - 'I wonder what could be down there... will they remember me... I know their games better now... will it the same as before. How doth the little crocodile? "Curiouser and curiouser and curiouser. "Please let there be pictures and conversations..." She begged under her breath. "And duchesses with pigs and pepper-pots..."

A dizzyness wavered past her like a heat haze and she hurried on, pushing the bag ahead of her. It was getting darker but now the dark of a tunnel, not of night.  
For an age it seemed that she crawled through the dark, the moist loam beneath her hands cool and distressingly real. Though the tunnel didn't seem to be getting any smaller Alice was beginning to feel a little panicky and considering turning back when her valise suddenly disappeared from beneath her hand. Fumbling forward another step she found the tunnel floor fell away straight down.

This was her last chance to change her mind, she cringed from the drop in the darkness but the memory of her the last suitor's clammy hands and roving gaze steeled her and taking a sharp breath in she threw herself out into space.

As she fell Alice found her valise resting on a slower falling round-stool. Remembering the length of the drop Alice caught the seat as she passed, clambering to sit upon it pulling her bag onto her lap. She smiled with relief hugging her valise to herself, then giggled, then laughed. Long and hysterically she laughed, clinging to the chair, gasping for breath with tears of relief rolling down her cheeks. She had made it back!

Eventually her sobs subsided and she sat, clutching her stitched ribs and getting her breath back then, practicality resuming, she dug into her bag she pulled out the sandwiches and flask of tea she had packed and toasted the geographic maps and jar of marmalade their good health. Remembering the bump at the bottom Alice caught a passing cushion and held it firmly under her to muffle her impact with the ground and waited for the bottom.

The ground, when it eventually came, was twiggier and dustier than she remembered. Coughing slightly she dusted herself off, picked up her bag and walked to the hall of doors with purpose.

The glass table was still there, deep in dust. So was the key but not the bottle. Alice pocketed the key and in doing so felt the empty bottle. Inspired by a thought Alice pulled out the old bottle and placed it on the table top. Using the remains of her tea, leaf-grit and all, she poured it into the bottle and, placing a thumb over the mouth of it, gave it a good shake in the hope of dissolving what little remained of the potion.

"Here's hoping!" She knocked back the little bottles tepid contents - the combination of tea, with a faint hint of peppermint, custard tart, roast lamb and buttered toast was interesting but not particularly pleasant. With satisfaction Alice noted that she shrank slower than last time and in a far more controlled fashion. Confident she turned on the door that had lead to the gardens.

"Can't enter without the key." The creaky voice of the doorknob sounded unused and it rolled its eyes at her smugly.

Alice put her hand in the pocket with the key only to find it gone. Looking up she could see it back where she had taken it from. She swore for the first time ever. With feeling. And found the experience rather theraputic.

The doorknob chortled and she noticed that a cake had appeared on a plate. A rather stale looking cake.

"I will not be playing that game again. Lets cut to the chase doorknob." She opened her valise and extracted the bottle of brandy, mercifully unbroken despite the rough handling. The door-knobs eyes gleamed.

"Whats that? Thats not brandy is it?" The doorknobs voice became wheedling.

"It most certainly is." Said Alice, measuring out a generous portion into the cup-lid of her flask, and after capping the bottle, extracted a straw from her bag. "Would you like some? Its awfully expensive." She feined taking a sip and watched the doorknob lick its lips, swallow and strain forward on the door.

She wafted the fumes towards the door and it began to sweat.

"You want this - I want that door unlocked."

The doorknob turned up its nose and looked away.

"Fair enough." Alice placed the cup with the straw pointing towards the door a foot out of its reach - were the door open the knob could easily reach the straw. Arranging her grubby skirts as neatly around her as she could Alice sat and pulled a book from her bag. "Don't mind me." She smiled with acrid sweetness at the door. "I'm sure the brandy will evaporate in its own time."

With a cry of distress the door swung frantically open, trying to get a sip from the straw and shut again before Alice could move - she was faster - the stout hardback was rammed into the door frame preventing the door from closing.

"There - now we can both have what we want." She pushed the door open and holding it so, nudged her valise through with a foot. It appeared only the doorknob had sentience and its control over the door itself was limited.

"Enjoy the brandy." She called over her shoulder as the door slammed shut behind her and she strode into the forest.

As she got further from the entrance hall and further into the trees the nagging 'who am I' sense that had originally kept her off kilter in Wonderland returned but this time she threw back her shoulders and announced to the world at large.

"I am Alice Plesance Liddell! I have faced worse than Jabberwockys and Bandersnatches at the card parties and society balls of London, Leeds and Oxford. I chose to be here and anything wants to try crossing me - May god have mercy on its soul!"

A soft chuckling echoed around the woods and, starting with a red twitching tail and unfading upwards, the Cheshire Cat appeared, perched in the air, eyes glowing.

"Welcome Home Alice"

Alice grinned in return. "Its good to be back!"

Authoria: I hope you enjoyed. Someday I may come back and do another chapter. But back to Benten then DisTressed for me for now!


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